NATO agrees to 'big bang' expansion in Eastern Europe / War on terror energized U.S. push to add nations from Soviet-era sphere

Robert G. Kaiser, Washington Post

Published
4:00 am PDT, Thursday, September 26, 2002

NATO's New Look. Chronicle Graphic

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NATO agrees to 'big bang' expansion in Eastern Europe / War on terror energized U.S. push to add nations from Soviet-era sphere

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2002-09-26 04:00:00 PDT Warsaw -- After months of intense but virtually unnoticed diplomacy, the NATO alliance is set to invite seven Eastern European countries to be new members -- the biggest expansion in its 53-year history.

Invitations will be issued at a NATO summit in November to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, according to U.S. and European officials.

The admission of the seven nations -- except for Slovenia, all former Soviet republics or satellites of the Soviet Union -- will bring more than 40 million additional people under NATO's security umbrella, and will stretch the alliance's territory from the Baltic coast just west of Russia to the Black Sea on Europe's southeastern flank.

The expansion would legally commit NATO's 19 current members, including the United States, to defend these new members' borders as though they were their own. With the addition three years ago of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, the expansion would make NATO a very different organization than it was during the Cold War, say diplomats and politicians in Europe and the United States.

NATO officials, who ended a three-day meeting of the alliance's defense ministers here, have decided not to announce the expansion until the November summit in Prague. George Robertson, NATO's secretary-general, said Wednesday that they had discussed "what the applicant countries still need to do" to qualify for membership.

U.S. and European officials said in interviews that agreement on admitting all seven had been reached, barring unanticipated, last-minute difficulties.

BUSH ENDORSED EXPANSION

President Bush first signaled the possibility of this leap for NATO in a speech delivered here in June 2001. "I believe in NATO membership for all of Europe's democracies that seek it and are ready to share the responsibilities that NATO brings," he said. He explained that he had in mind "all of Europe's new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and all that lie between."

The German, British and other governments, concerned over how Russia would react, were still hesitant about admitting the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the only applicants that were part of the Soviet Union and share borders with Russia.

A "big bang" of expansion -- as it became known to NATO insiders -- was far from certain when Bush spoke last year. "Sept. 11 changed the way we looked at enlargement," said a senior U.S. official closely involved in the process. Suddenly, the United States realized that "we need as many allies as we can get" to fight terrorism.

The war in Afghanistan "provided opportunities for some countries to show that they were capable of acting like allies," the official added. Bulgaria and Romania both hurriedly offered assistance to the war effort. Bulgaria contributed an airfield for the refueling of tankers supporting the Afghanistan campaign, and Romania sent a battalion of troops into the war zone,

using its own U.S.-made C-130 transport aircraft.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sent troops to the new allied air base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan to help provide base security.

Now, according to Robert Hunter, U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Clinton administration, "people are going to hold their noses and swallow hard on Romania and Bulgaria," which the Clinton administration did not consider ready for membership. Hunter now supports their inclusion, he said.

The last of the seven to be included in the consensus was Slovakia, following parliamentary elections last week. Voters there did not elect former Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, whom U.S. officials viewed as unsuitable to head a NATO country.

QUIET SUPPORT FOR INCLUSION

Bush's speech in Warsaw last year embraced a doctrine of inclusion that had been pushed quietly by several U.S. officials, particularly Daniel Fried, former ambassador to Poland and a member of Bush's National Security Council staff.

Fried and his allies within the administration argued that expanding NATO would mean expanding the area of democracy, free markets and stability in Europe, and would give the United States staunch new supporters inside the alliance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin strengthened those arguments last fall when he stated publicly that the three Baltic republics had the right to join NATO. This was part of a reorientation of Russian policy that was formalized in May when NATO and Russia formed a new joint council for close cooperation on a range of security issues.

Diplomats now describe NATO as an alliance of "19 plus one," implicitly granting Russia a kind of associate membership in the alliance.

On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov took part in the final session of the defense ministers' meeting, making animated contributions in excellent English, according to John McCallum, Canada's defense minister.

Once Russia and NATO had agreed in May on their new joint council, the last obstacle to a major NATO expansion fell away. Proponents of the idea could emphasize the benefits, and there were no strong arguments standing in the way.

Robert Bradtke, deputy assistant secretary of state and a key player in the process, put it this way in an interview: "Bringing these countries into NATO will contribute to the consolidation of democracy and will reflect the new strategic situation: Russia is no longer a threat."

NATO officials said it would take at least two years for the parliaments of all 19 member nations to ratify amendments to the North Atlantic Treaty that would allow full membership for the seven countries.